DSA Panel: Rank and File Socialists in the Unions

Download PDF. Feel Free to share.

Roger Martinez

Richard Mellor

We went to an East Bay Democratic Socialist (DSA) event yesterday (3-24-19), that was billed as “Rank-and-File: Socialists in the Labor Movement”.  A panel of what were described as “Socialists who have been rank and file workers” were to discuss their experiences and their perspectives for the labor movement.

We have to point out that this meeting was a completely undemocratic and moribund affair. There was no questioning of the panelists from the audience of about 40 people and no discussion at all from the floor. A dominant theme was the repeated times they talked about educating workers and the need to “embed yourself” in the working class which is sound advice if it is delivered in a way that doesn’t reflect a sense of arrogance, self importance and superiority on the part of the deliverer.

The two authors writing this have some 60 or more years of union activity between them and also published an opposition newsletter for a number of years in the American Federation of State Council and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) called the Afscme Activist. It was taken by Afscme locals in about 10 states and also had individual subscribers.  Local 444 of Afscme, the local to which the authors belonged and served both as stewards in the workplace and officers over the years, was undoubtedly one of the more militant and left wing locals in the country at one point.

The local was involved aggressively in domestic violence issues, racism and police violence in the communities in which we worked and also prominent in the campaign for an independent (Labor) party for the working class organizing a successful meeting for Anthonly Mazzochi, former OCAW official, to speak at in Oakland CA in 1989, we met Mazzochi at a Labor Notes conference in the mid 80’s and asked if he would come and speak at a public meeting. He said he would if such a meeting was endorsed by a local and we got numerous locals to do so. Mazzochi admitted that it was the success of this meeting that led him to form Labor Party Advocates.  A video of this meeting is here.

There were also other long time union activists in the audience that would have no doubt contributed to a discussion over strategy and tactics for not just socialists but any genuine rank and file workers wanting to change the disastrous concessionary policies of the present hierarchy at the helm of organized labor. After Richard Mellor’s request to be on the panel was not successful we compiled and distributed the flier above. There were important questions we wanted the rank and file socialists on the panel to respond to as well as DSA as a whole.  We hope that DSA members will read the flier and discuss our questions and their thoughts on the picket line rules put out by the IUOE leadership.  Do they agree, do they not. What strategy does DSA have for changing the concessionary course of organized labor.

A couple of months prior, an issue we think is important all genuine rank and file activists socialists or not, discuss-----the inevitable conflict with the present union hierarchy over their concessionary polices and practices-----was touched on by Richard Mellor at another DSA event and was met with considerable hostility by the chair of this meeting, a young man named Robbie. Here is a short video of the comments at that DSA event.

And this crucial issue was completely absent in the presentations of the panelists yesterday. Workers need to be educated about labor struggles, the big picture, that the battles we are engaged in is a class struggle and so on. Tim, the Oakland teacher, talked of the recent strike and how important it is to “train” the rank and file and Ken Paff, from Labor Notes and the TDU also echoed the need to educate and train more leaders and gave a rousing endorsement of Democrat Bernie Sanders for president.  Though Labor Notes has considerable success organizing large conferences that many rank and file workers attend, and provides useful information for activists, both the TDU (Teamsters For a Democratic Union and Labor Notes, do not seriously challenge the policies of the labor bureaucracy.  You can read our account of the different approaches to work in the labor movement between Facts For Working People and Labor Notes here.  There is also a second part here. We welcome comments from Labor Notes as a discussion of this subject in the ranks of organized labor and the working class as a whole is important and can raise class-consciousness.

Tim, the Oakland teacher talked of the years of “passivity” in the Oakland teachers union prior to the strike. But he gave no explanation of why this was or the union leadership’s role in it.  He also talked of the importance of “fighting” at the sate level implying, we assume, that a local union does not have the power to stop school closures and win significant reductions in class size. We completely agree with him. But the CTA/NEA has over 300,000 members statewide, this is the statewide power we have to mobilize. Yet as with the AFL-CIO leadership, the policy from above is that small locals are isolated and left to fight battles independently and potential rank and file power in not simply not mobilized, it is suppressed. New leadership will find that out very quickly.

The reason for this flawed approach lies squarely on the shoulders of the state and national leadership but it’s as if they don’t exist in meetings like this one we attended.

All of them raised the need to get a union job and also to build leadership but made no mention at all about how the present entrenched bureaucracy will respond. No mention of what rank and file workers who raise opposing views will face when they do so or how rank and file workers can build oppositions to the present leadership by building a base on the ground floor, especially in the workplace where the presence of the bureaucracy is very limited or absent entirely.

It was a thoroughly undemocratic affair this forum and a bit of a disappointment to be honest. No serious worker looking for help in fighting the boss, but also the obstacle of our own leadership (a more complicated issue) would have found any answers. The best rank and file, working class activists on the job would have been completely turned of by this so-called panel of successful socialists in the labor movement. What we were there for was to be lectured to by the left wing of the union bureaucracy represented by Labor Notes and the TDU whose leading figures have been brought in to DSA as the strategists for DSA work in the trade unions. The membership might want to consider the implications of this.